A Study On Rural Teachers’ Professional Development Of One Specialty And Multiple Abilities

The key to rural revitalization lies in rural education,and rural teachers play a leading role in invigorating rural education.Hence empowering rural revitalization with high-quality rural teacher education is conducive for teachers to perform their rural education tasks efficiently and facilitates the high-quality development of rural education.Equally important,it’s beneficial for rural revitalization to release new vitality.As general overstaffing and structural deficiency occur in the team construction of rural teachers,China fails to provide teacher resources reasonably within a short time.It poses an urgent and realistic demand for developing rural teachers into versatile teachers with one specialty and multiple abilities.Meanwhile,gaining all-disciplinary proficiency and developing one specialty and multiple abilities have been critical development directions for international teacher education.In the context of realistic demands and requirements of the times,stimulating rural teachers’ vitality,unleashing rural teachers’ potential,giving full play to rural teachers’ initiative,and facilitating rural teachers’ development of one specialty and multiple abilities become long-term measures for solving the deficiency of rural teachers and an imperative need to assist with the rural revitalization strategy.However,rural teachers oriented toward disciplinary cultivation account for the majority of Chinese rural teachers.The teaching inconsistent with what was learned and irrelevant to professional titles has prevented rural teachers from developing one specialty and multiple abilities.As a result,rural teachers’ development quality mismatches the work demands of rural education teaching.According to the theory of teachers’ professional development stage,teachers’ development is a process with continuous changes.As the development stage varies,teachers face different development problems and needs.A survey and analysis of teachers in rural primary schools,County H,Guizhou Province,showed that rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities faced the following problems: the vacancy of rotation of rural teachers and the volunteer teaching channels contradicts the institutional conception of reasonably allocating rural teacher resources;oppositions between profession-oriented pre-service teacher training model and the professional development of after-service teachers with one specialty and multiple abilities;inadequate correlations between rural teachers’ educational levels and teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities;the contradiction between the continuous loss of mature teachers and a large-scale supply of novice teachers makes it difficult for teachers to settle locally;the spillover of teachers’ “let-itrot” attitude in the burnout stage causes the Sheep-Flock Effect;limited career opportunities restrain teachers’ upward development.The stakeholder theory stipulates that rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities is closely connected with five subjects: the government,normal universities and colleges,rural schools,rural teachers,and rural society.The buck-passing of these five subjects will further impede rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities.A further study of these five subjects’ rights and responsibilities has revealed five problems: inadequate support from governmental resources,a mismatch between the talent cultivation of college education and the talent demands of rural social education,a weak environment in rural schools,a vague understanding of teachers’ status and responsibilities,and the disorganization of the rural society results in inadequate support from the rural society.These problems jointly cause rural teachers’ dissatisfactory professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities.On this basis,the government,normal colleges and universities,rural schools,rural teachers,and rural society should collaborate and take multiple measures to facilitate rural teachers’ growth into outstanding professional teachers with one specialty and multiple abilities.More specifically,the following five measures can be taken:(1)seize the foothold of rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities,formulate policies to enhance the compulsoriness and reasonableness of rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities,provide relevant supporting systems to guarantee the scientific nature and continuity of rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities;(2)set up a pre-service rural teacher cultivation plan oriented on one specialty and multiple abilities,timely change existing thoughts for cultivating normal students,and scientifically design a professional cultivation system for prospective teachers with one specialty and multiple abilities;(3)build a base for cultivating after-service rural teachers with one specialty and multiple abilities,complete matching resources,establish a training system for cultivating rural teachers with one specialty and multiple abilities,and improve the incentive mechanism for rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities;(4)enhance rural teachers’ educational conscientiousness of developing one specialty and multiple abilities,clarify teachers’ occupational connotations to break the development inertia,and correct personal teaching attitudes to resist development inertia;(5)cultivate a strong environmental advantage for rural teachers’ professional development of one specialty and multiple abilities,reconstruct and support rural teachers’ trust in developing one specialty and multiple abilities,and create an interactive scenario conducive to such development.